Dealing with operational and profitability issues of a part-time food business as a new entrepreneur

• Main Author: Tubale, Alfred C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Food industry and trade; Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6764
• Institution: De La Salle University

This action research presents how a full-time corporate employee addressed problems in operations and profitability of a part-time food kiosk business. Major identified issues such as low efficiency on food preparation that causes customers leaving lines and increasing competition inside and outside the food court’s premises (with an emphasis on low cost competitors) have been prevented the business to gain positive profits. We ran a time and motion study for each processes involved in our food preparation and later realized that speed cannot be improved anymore and instead focused on eliminating processes that can be done prior an actual order to cut waiting time by almost half. We also explored activities such as delivery services and coupon promo marketing for us to gain customer perception and foot traffic. Lastly, we’ve reduced the frequency of going to the market by proper estimation of the amount of inventory to be replenished every week in order to save transportation cost and to also reduce physical effort. Upon completion of two action research cycles, our interventions, though it helped improve our profits, still failed to achieve what we’ve desired – to improve sales and to have positive profit that would enable us to maintain the business running. At the end, we decided to close the business. Despite the failure, we’ve gained significant experience of what it takes to handle a business especially part-time. It was only during the process of action research that I fully realized that good relationship among the members is the key to have good collaboration and quality information. Having no visibility on the business most of the time, it’s very useful for me to keep communicating a clear picture of the desired change so that my team don’t lose sight of where we are heading. Also, the key lesson we learned from this venture is to have an honest assessment of ourselves first before engaging to a business. It’s when business value and commitment are both high that our decision to engage is right and that entrepreneurial success is highly achievable.